Cali Police Shoot and Kill Boy Carrying Toy Gun

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies shot and killed a 13-year-old boy Tuesday as he was walking down the street carrying a toy rifle in Santa Rosa, Calif.

The incident began at 3 p.m. when officers saw Andy Lopez walking home from school—wearing a blue hoodie, of course—holding what they thought was a real rifle. The deputies called for backup and ordered him to drop the gun. According to witnesses, Lopez then turned around to face the officers and was shot "at least once."

According to Lt. Paul Henry, "One of the deputies described that as the subject was turning toward him the barrel of the assault rifle was rising up and turning in his direction." The deputy, fearing "for his safety, the safety of his partner, and the safety of the community members in the area" began to shoot. Lopez was pronounced dead at the scene after deputies handcuffed him and determined he was unresponsive.

Authorities also report that Lopez was found with a plastic handgun in his waistband.

Lopez was described by teachers as “kind, intelligent, and capable” and on Wednesday, family friend Alma Galvan asked the San Francisco Chronicle, "Why did they have to kill him?" Another family friend, Ezau Ruiz, told KTVU that the community was tired of police violence: "We're not gonna let this one slide. Enough is enough."

This is ridiculous

 

[NickNitro]

Jesus ****ing Christ this needs to stop. How many innocent children need to die like this before cops are trained properly?

 

[Teelie]

Sadly a lot more because this happens more often than people realize. It's not even just teenagers, it's adults too. The cops are so trigger-happy or afraid for their lives they'll shoot anyone who looks "menacing."

 

[Cobblepot]

This is why real looking fakes are illegal in Holland.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Well the article doesn't specify but I assume it was a BB gun because in the USA all "toy" guns have a bright orange tip. For it to look real you either have to remove it or paint it. Again I assume it was a BB gun though but any trained officer should know the difference between a rifle and a BB gun

 

[NickNitro]

This is why real looking fakes are illegal in Holland.

But then you hear the stories of guys getting shot holding cellphones or wallets.....

 

[Teelie]

Or bright orange, clearly fake weapons or "weapon-like" objects that any reasonable person would clearly see as not a weapon.

 

[Monsieur Xavier]

My outsider point of view : with all the shooting done by kids in the US lately ( and not so lately ), it was a matter of time for something like that to happen.
What if the rifle wasn't a toy and the kid had killed pass-byers.

 

[Teelie]

What if they had waited to see if it was really a weapon instead of a toy? Without more details it's hard to say they were justified in shooting him.

Police do love to say everything they do is justified but if the shooters were civilians instead, you can bet they would be arrested on murder charges.

 

[Monsieur Xavier]

I am not justifying it, just playing the devil's advocate.
"Wait to see if it is a real gun" usually means taking a bullet.

 

[Teelie]

Not necessarily. It could mean seeing if there are obvious markings that identify it as fake, giving the kid a chance to put the gun down instead of firing on him the moment he turns to see if it's really police officers and not just some neighborhood kids messing around.

Fake guns are almost always plastic and plastic is usually easy to differentiate from metal as well.

 

[PemLam]

Well the article doesn't specify but I assume it was a BB gun because in the USA all "toy" guns have a bright orange tip. For it to look real you either have to remove it or paint it. Again I assume it was a BB gun though but any trained officer should know the difference between a rifle and a BB gun

Umm, no. Feel free to look at the images of some of the "fake" guns out there and tell me if you can see the difference. Hell, AirSoft guns are specifically designed to resemble the real thing and are so realistic they're used in training simulations for both police department and military.

It's a tragedy what happened to this kid and I wish it would have turned out differently, but to say they should have known it wasn't a real gun is nonsense. If it's determined that the officers could/should have done something differently, then I hope they're held accountable. Until then, unlike others in these threads, I'll refrain from calling nearly every cop out there a trigger happy, power hungry, untrained idiot.

 

[jacobed]

How come the kid didn't put it down. Now shooting him was completely the wrong move and I think they obviously acted a little quickly but I do understand their nervousness in the situation. The gun looked really real, more and more kids are carrying real guns as scary as it is to think that and the kid didn't put it down when they told him too. Was shooting him the answer? hell no I hope those cops go to jail but I do understand why they'd be nervous in that situation

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

The incident began at 3 p.m. when officers saw Andy Lopez walking home from school—wearing a blue hoodie, of course—holding what they thought was a real rifle. The deputies called for backup and ordered him to drop the gun. According to witnesses, Lopez then turned around to face the officers and was shot "at least once."

According to Lt. Paul Henry, "One of the deputies described that as the subject was turning toward him the barrel of the assault rifle was rising up and turning in his direction." The deputy, fearing "for his safety, the safety of his partner, and the safety of the community members in the area" began to shoot. Lopez was pronounced dead at the scene after deputies handcuffed him and determined he was unresponsive.

The kid had no idea what was going on. he simply started to turn around and the cop perceived him as raising the weapon. I don't know too many kids that would immediately drop their toys and put their hands on their head when they are trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Umm, no. Feel free to look at the images of some of the "fake" guns out there and tell me if you can see the difference. Hell, AirSoft guns are specifically designed to resemble the real thing and are so realistic they're used in training simulations for both police department and military.

It's a tragedy what happened to this kid and I wish it would have turned out differently, but to say they should have known it wasn't a real gun is nonsense. If it's determined that the officers could/should have done something differently, then I hope they're held accountable. Until then, unlike others in these threads, I'll refrain from calling nearly every cop out there a trigger happy, power hungry, untrained idiot.

Those are all airsoft guns, notice how they all have bright orange tips? They are not legally allowed to sell them without those tips. I couldn't find one instance of a regular looking airsoft rifle on google images. And all of thos guns are made clearly out of plastic, real guns are metal.

Those are BB guns, notice the lack of an orange tip because while not usually lethal they still fire real projectiles. Any officer should be able to tell the difference between a standard BB gun and a real rifle

 

[NickNitro]

well what kind of "gun" was this kid carrying

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Found more info and apparently it is legal to sell air-soft guns without the orange tip:

Santa Rosa and Petaluma police are investigating the shooting, as is the county district attorney's office.

According to the account from Henry, the Santa Rosa lieutenant, the incident began about 3 p.m. when two deputies pulled behind Andy, who wore a blue hoodie and shorts and walked with a rifle in his left hand that had the same brown and black parts as a real AK-47.

Federal law requires replica guns to have an orange tip, but Andy's toy rifle didn't have one.

Witnesses heard a siren briefly, Henry said, as both deputies got out of the car and took cover behind open doors. Henry said witnesses heard a deputy shout twice, "Put the gun down," before Andy turned around and was shot.

Henry would not say how many times the deputy fired or how many times Andy was hit. The deputies handcuffed the boy, he said, and began "life-saving measures," but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The boy also had a plastic handgun in his waistband - this one translucent with an orange tip, Henry said.

The deputies were placed on routine paid leave, pending the investigation. Their names were not released.

An expert on police shootings said the incident underscores the challenges officers face when confronting people with guns that turn out to be fake. Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina, said officers often don't have time to determine whether a gun is real.

"As long as an armed person appears to be a threat, you don't have time to look to see if it's a toy," Alpert said. "If it looks real, you've got to believe it's real. A perceived threat trumps age; it trumps mental abilities."

Some legislators have sought to impose restrictions on replica guns in an effort to make sure police don't mistake them for real ones. California law requires "imitation weapons" to look like playthings by being brightly colored or transparent.

But a state senator's proposal in 2011 to extend that requirement to air guns failed after manufacturers and retailers opposed it. The proposal stemmed from an officer's shooting of a 13-year-old boy in Los Angeles who turned out to be carrying a pellet gun.

 

[NickNitro]

It's true though, this is a bi product of all the horrible kids who have been shooting up their schools/killing teachers. It's really sad.

 

[Breogan]

well what kind of "gun" was this kid carrying

It was a "pellet gun" looked real -
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/23/us-usa-california-shooting-idUSBRE99M0VU20131023

And sadly just a day after a 14-year-old boy killed a teacher at a Nevada with a real gun.

 

[NickNitro]

****...that does look real...jesus man these parents need to watch what the hellt heir kids carry around....my mom would of never let me walk around with that when I was a kid

 

[Breogan]

****...that does look real...jesus man these parents need to watch what the hellt heir kids carry around....my mom would of never let me walk around with that when I was a kid

Yep, not sure where the OP got his "Toy Gun" story, that is a "replica" of an assault rifle.

With the ease one can get a hold of the real thing today, and how prominent they've become in our everyday culture = jumpy police. Kids parents should have known better than to let him walk around with such a realistic looking replica.

Sad

 

[Teelie]

I can tell from the stock it's a fake (the screw holes) but otherwise it does look genuine at a glance which is a really stupid thing to be toting around in public.

Still, the police should be trained to not instantly shoot to kill before trying to safely apprehend suspects. What if their bullets missed and shot some innocent bystander? Does that somehow make it okay? It's not like that hasn't happened before. Like the story in New York where cops shot up a street and critically injured several innocent bystanders.

They clearly panicked and shot at him, whether he raised the barrel or not and fired on him before he could do anything hostile.

 

[moviedoors]

It's a sticky, ugly, sad scenario. I'm not prepared to point fingers. I'm sure those cops didn't want to shoot a kid.

 

[Breogan]

Comparison. -
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/loca...ill-Boy-With-Toy-Assault-Rifle-228927441.html

 

[Teelie]

At a distance it would be hard to distinguish. Now the question comes back to, why the hell was he running around with it?